This (and This... and That Too) Is a Hudson Mohawke Production

After breaking out with the monster beat duo TNGHT and as one of Kanye's studio gurus, Hudson Mohawke tells Jeremy Gordon why he largely eschewed festival bangers and big-name features on his pointedly eclectic new album.

Why the Kanye-approved producer largely put the festival bangers and big-name features on the back burner for his pointedly eclectic new album

Hudson Mohawke looks like someone dumped a bucket of water over his head. The producer born Ross Birchard was up until 6 a.m. last night, and while he’s eager to talk about his second album, Lantern, it’s clear that he’d feel better sitting in bed, greasy sandwich in hand. Maybe that’s why he’s having a hard time articulating himself when we meet one afternoon at Manhattan’s Soho Grand Hotel. “I want to introduce people to the fact that I'm not just a…” he begins, before trailing off. After a moment, he finds his train of thought. “I’m not even gonna say the word, but I’m not a such-and-such producer. I've produced a lot of different stuff over the years.”

Rap, EDM, Warp, young—a lot of constrictive terms could stand in for “such-and-such.” But what the 29-year-old Glasgow native has accomplished since the release of his debut LP Butter in 2009 has allowed him to do away with modifiers and leave the job description by itself: producer, no gimmicks required. He rubs elbows with the world’s hottest rappers and then retreats to his London studio to work on his own weirdo compositions. He records with avant saint Antony Hegarty in the same room where he worked on Kanye West’s “All Day”. One of the highlights on Lantern is “Ryderz”, which lays an intricate weave of synthesizers over ‘70s soul singer/songwriter D.J. Rogers’ “Watch Out for the Riders” until it explodes in neon euphoria. Another highlight, “Kettles”, is the opposite: a dreamy instrumental whose wind chimes and swelling strings wouldn’t sound out of place in a Disney sequence.

In some ways, Lantern is an off-speed pitch—a reminder that Birchard isn’t limited to his outsized work with TNGHT, the partnership with Canadian producer Lunice that launched a thousand festival mosh pits and catapulted him to global recognition. TNGHT began as an afterthought, and instead, became his life. “We wanted to make sure that [TNGHT] didn’t become bigger than our solo careers,” he says, “and then it almost did.” Without TNGHT, he would not have worked with Kanye on Yeezus or become an in-house producer for G.O.O.D. Music. But those commitments pushed back Lantern, which was originally due in 2013 and had Birchard whittling down about 40 songs to end up with the 14-track album.

With greater power comes additional responsibility, which Birchard is slowly learning about. There are future projects floating on the fray: an album he’s producing for Antony, a film score he’s been approached to create. While the music geek in him would like to dish about these potential endeavors, there are legal and contractual obligations to abide by now.

Instead, he talks about his current home of London, and how he finds it cluttered and hectic. Then, a new possibility reveals itself. “I might even rather live out here, to be honest,” he says, referring to New York City. “That's a consideration for later in the year.” It’s a quick aside, a tossed-off thought from someone with the freedom to instantly live out what he wants. You work with Kanye West, and then you move to New York. Why not? Here, he brightens, last night’s hangover resolving into clarity.

Pitchfork: There aren't any rap features on Lantern, which is surprising.

Hudson Mohawke: People are expecting it to be a rap record—and it would be so easy to make a record of 10 rap songs—but I don't necessarily want to hear that. I wanted to go back and put the focus on myself for this record.

Pitchfork: Is it natural for you to navigate between the worlds of Warp and G.O.O.D Music?

HM: I always wanted to be able to be a rap producer while also being able to work with people like Antony or Björk. I never really thought it was possible, but thankfully I was just about able to manage it. There were moments over the last couple of years where I've been like, “This is too good of an opportunity to turn down. This is never going to come to me again. I have to do this.” I've spread myself too thin. Now, I'm more willing to be just like, “I need to take some time to do my own project.” It actually works out better that way, because I’m still involved in the major projects with G.O.O.D. but not expected to be on call 24/7.

“We felt like the TNGHT record spawned kind of a parody genre. We just wanted to make some instrumental beats and put them out, we weren't expecting it to be this crazy EDM festival shit.”

Pitchfork: When the TNGHT record was released, it was praised for being ahead of its time. Now that a few years have gone by, do you think about how to stay on the cutting edge?

HM: No. It's not something I think about at all. It wasn't something I thought about when doing the TNGHT stuff, either. When myself and Lunice did the TNGHT project, it was not even intended for release. That's basically why we decided to put it on hiatus for a while, because we felt like—without wanting to sound too arrogant—what that record spawned became kind of a parody genre. We just wanted to make some instrumental beats and put them out, we weren't expecting it to be this crazy EDM festival shit.

So while the crowds and fees and festival stages are getting bigger, in some sense the open-mindedness of the audiences that are attending those shows is becoming slightly narrower. I could never had played something like "Kettles" at a show like that. That's why we wanted to refocus on our own projects. So we haven't quit the project, but there won't be anymore TNGHT music until both of our solo records are released.

Pitchfork: You’ve talked about how you’re more of an “executive producer” on this album. Is that a new approach?

HM: It's something I've learned from Kanye: You have a core idea, and someone else might have an opinion or input that you would never necessarily think of yourself. To have people's opinions who I really respect—such as Mark Ronson or Zane Lowe—involved in the process is a totally different way of working compared to my last solo record, which was entirely done in my mom's basement with me hunched over my computer—which harkened back to my turntablist days where I'd be home from school and hunched over turntables for like 10 hours. So this album marks a totally different way for producing for me, because it's more like conducting a project rather than it being just myself doing stuff and sending files over the Internet.

I've never been the best collaborator with people that I don't know; A&R and managers tend to just send a new artist to you and tell you to make a song together even though you've never met each other and you don't know what the fuck each other's music sounds like. But luckily the people that are involved on this record were people that I was already familiar with.

Pitchfork: Did anything fall through on the record?

HM: We really wanted to get André 3000. He said he wanted to do it but he was working on a movie at the time. But even that would have been more in a singing capacity rather than a rap capacity.